Wednesday, November 25, 2015

A couple
of years ago, Jerry Bowyer, writing in Forbes Magazine, recounted the
real significance of Thanksgiving, a significance that is too often lost among
the turkey dinners, football games, and stories about Indians who befriended
the early settlers.

In 1620,
the Plymouth pilgrims based their original community on Plato’s Republic,
a collective model that appealed to their religious convictions and morality.
But the communal model didn’t work for them. After over two years of failing
harvests and resulting malnutrition, disease, starvation, and deaths, the
pilgrims replaced the communal model with a model based on private property.
The ensuing harvest was abundant, with surpluses available for trade.

Their
Thanksgiving celebrated the triumph of the individual, private property, and
incentive, over collectivism. At first, the pilgrims were guilty because they
were putting self-interest over the seeming altruism of socialism. Yet the
devout survivors had learned two lessons: 1) that a theoretical and utopian
collective society fails, and (2) in real life, private property and capitalism
produce prosperity. For them, God, not Plato, knew best. Accepting the
principles of private property and self-interest was God’s way of harnessing
self-interest to the greater good. We know all of this because an elder of the
Plymouth plantation, William Bradford, kept a journal and it survives today.
Mr. Bowyer’s earlier article, with additional historical background, is here.)

It’s wrong to say that American was founded by capitalists. In
fact, America was founded by socialists who had the humility to learn from
their initial mistakes and embrace freedom. One of the earliest and arguably
most historically significant North American colonies was Plymouth Colony,
founded in 1620 in what is now known as Plymouth, Massachusetts. As I’ve
outlined in greater detail here before (Lessons From a Capitalist Thanksgiving), the original
colony had written into its charter a system of communal property and labor.

As William Bradford recorded in his Of Plymouth Plantation, a people who had formerly been
known for their virtue and hard work became lazy and unproductive. Resources
were squandered, vegetables were allowed to rot on the ground and mass
starvation was the result. And where there is starvation, there is plague.
After 2 1/2 years, the leaders of the colony decided to abandon their socialist
mandate and create a system which honored private property. The colony survived
and thrived and the abundance which resulted was what was celebrated at that
iconic Thanksgiving feast.

As my friend Reuven Brenner has taught me, history is a series
of experiments: The Human Gamble. Some gambles work and are adopted by history
and some do not and should be abandoned by it. The problem is that the human
gamble only works if there is a record of experimental outcomes and if decision
makers consult that record. For many years, the story of the first failed
commune of Plymouth Bay was part of the collective memory of American students.
But Progressive Education found that story unhelpful and it has fallen into
obscurity, which explains why (as I alluded to before) a well-educated
establishment figure like Jared Bernstein would be unaware of it.

I’m often
asked why our current leadership class forgets the lessons of the past so
often. They are, after all, very smart men and women. Don’t they know that
collectivism will fail?

No, they
don’t. Not anymore. For much of our history, our leaders were educated in the
principles which were to help them avoid errors once they have joined the
ruling class. They studied to learn how to not misuse power. Now our leaders
learn nothing of the dangers of abusing power: their education is entirely
geared to its acquisition. All of their neurons are trained on that one
objective – to get to the top. What they do when they get there is a matter for
later. And what happens to the country when they’re done with their experiments
is beside the point: after all, their experiments will not really affect them
personally. History is the story of the limitations of human power. But the
limits of power is a topic for people who doubt themselves and their right to
rule, not the self-anointed.

That’s
how it is now, and that’s how it was in 1620. The charter of the Plymouth
Colony reflected the most up-to-date economic, philosophical and religious
thinking of the early 17th century. Plato was in vogue then, and Plato believed
in central planning by intellectuals in the context of communal property,
centralized state education, state centralized cultural offerings and communal
family structure. For Plato, it literally did take a village to raise a child.
This collectivist impulse reflected itself in various heretical offshoots of
Protestant Christianity with names like The True Levelers, and the Diggers,
mass movements of people who believed that property and income distinctions
should be eliminated, that the wealthy should have their property expropriated
and given to what we now call the 99%. This kind of thinking was rife in the
1600s and is perhaps why the Pilgrim settlers settled for a charter which did not
create a private property system.

But the
Pilgrims learned and prospered. And what they learned, we have forgotten and we
fade. Now, new waves of ignorant masses flood into parks and public
squares. New Platonists demand control of other people’s property. New True
Levelers legally occupy the prestige pulpits of our nation, secular and sacred.
And now, as then, the productive class of our now gigantic,
colony-turned-superpower, learn and teach again, the painful lessons of
history. Collectivism violates the iron laws of human nature. It has always
failed. It is always failing, and it will always fail. I thank God that it is
failing now. Providence is teaching us once again.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

As a Cleveland Tea Party Patriot, I receive
regular emails from Tea Party Patriots’ national office and also their PAC, Tea
Party Patriot Citizen Fund. Today, the email from the Citizen Fund reported on
Ted Cruz’s efforts to win support from evangelicals; Jeb Bush’s message on
national security; and Rubio's plan to defeat ISIL [ISIS]. The section refers
the reader to Senator Rubio’s plan, published on the Politico blog here.

I
would also refer the reader to Ed Straker’s take on Sen. Rubio’s plan over
at American Thinker here. Its
title is “Marco Rubio wants to defeat
ISIS by arming ISIS and fighting its enemies,” and here is an extract (Rubio's words appear in gray highlight):

Marco Rubio has a plan for
defeating ISIS. . . .

As
president, I would demand that Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government grant greater
autonomy to Sunnis, and would provide direct military support to Sunnis and the
Kurds if Baghdad fails to support them.

Guess who is currently
supporting ISIS, lock, stock, and barrel: the Sunnis! Rubio would arm
them directly.

Cutting
off oxygen to ISIL also requires defeating Assad in Syria. I would declare
no-fly zones to ground Assad’s air force and coalition-controlled “safe zones”
in the country to stop his military

If Assad is defeated, can
you guess who will move in and take over his territory? I'll give you a
hint: the group's name begins with the letter "I."

. . .

Marco Rubio is not a
brilliant foreign policy strategist. . . . When Politico starts publishing his
press releases, you know you're reading the words of an establishment
Republican.

Cleveland Tea Party Patriots is nonpartisan and does not endorse
or contribute to any candidate, but it does want to contribute to debates on
major issues, in this case, a strategy to defeat ISIS.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Northeast Ohio Democrats Tim Ryan and
Marcy Kaptur were among 47 Democrats who joined with the majority of House
Republicans on Thursday to pass a controversial bill that would increase
government background checks done before Syrian or Iraqi refugees are admitted
to the United States.

All Ohio's
Republicans backed the bill, which passed by a veto-proof vote of 289 to 137.

Under the Paul Ryan approved bill
-American Security Against Foreign Enemies(SAFE) Act of 2015– the
FBI director would be required to certify the background investigation of each
refugee from Iraq and Syria. And only refugees from Iraq and Syria. And if you
are Syrian and you walk into Turkey to begin applying for refugee status,
presto, the bill doesn’t cover you.

TheSAFE ACTrequires the FBI,
along with the secretary of Homeland Security and the director of National
Intelligence, to certify to Congress that each refugee is not a security
threat. The legislation also requires the Department of Homeland Security
Inspector General’s Office to independently assess the refugee approvals.

However, the bill is largely
meaningless and well beyond toothless. Senator Sessions (R-AL) noted refugees
and migrants from nine different countries have been implicated in terrorism
incidents over the past year. “Ignoring this reality, the American SAFE
Act allows the president to continue to bring in as many refugees as he wants
from anywhere in the world,” Sessions said previously.

There is nothing in the bill to prevent refujihadis from crossing our borders. Just more Kabuki theater from Congress.

Mayors
of 18 other cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago also
signed a letter sent to President Barack Obamain September, pledging to work with
the administration to help resettle Syrian refugees in their towns.

But
like many of those mayors, Jackson's views on the issue depart from those of
his state's governor.

Monday, November 16, 2015

Cleveland.com
reports that Gov. Kasich went on record to refuse to admit Syrian refugees into Ohio, but over at neoneocon.com, we find that the
16 (and counting) governors who want to refuse admitting “refugees” probably
can’t block the feds. Some refugees are already here, of course. Rush has a map here (scroll down a tad).

Monday, November 2, 2015

A lot has been written on why voters should vote no on the Responsible Ohio's Issue 3 Marijuana Monopoly in the upcoming November election.

Be it for religious reasons, medical disagreements, protecting the Ohio Constitution from being used as a tool to create monopolies, they all present very good reasons to vote no on Issue 3.

The purpose of this post is to clear the room from the cloud of the weed smoke that hangs over Ohio and expose who is really behind Responsible Ohio (Issue 3) and Ian James, the driving force of wanting the green dollars from this "green" initiative.

The below video, put together by Citizens Against Responsible Ohio, is from leaked emails and leaked audio of a conference call on April 13th, 2015 between Responsible Ohio, the Democrat aligned Progress Ohio former Ohio Democrat party officials and Don McTigue - a long time go to attorney for the Ohio Democrats.

Progress Ohio, a political/public policy action committee of the Democratic persuasion, implicate some very subversive tactics used against Ohioans. Many of the players involved are known supporters of none other than Hillary Clinton.

These tactics aim to intentionally mislead and misinform Ohioans via Social Media, as evidenced with their use of fake Ninja Twitter accounts.

Ian James, the architect and public face of Issue 3, was former Ohio GOP chairman Bob Bennett's hand chosen consultant to collect the signatures for the 2009 passage of the casino amendment. Now, James has the entire ODP 2016 presidntial campaign Fake Mutant Ninja Turtling for a marijuana monopoly, an exact replica of his 2009 casino sham. Even Ian's husband Stephen Letourneau is puff-puff passing through tens of thousands of dollars himself to Progress Ohio's ninja hive.

Known as Responsible Ohio's "puppet master" is Erik Greathouse, who was Chris Redfern's finance director at the Ohio Democratic Party under Ted Strickland until the Ed FitzGerald campaign.

Responsible Ohio's fake twitter ninja operation at Progress Ohio is run by Brian Hester, who most recently was ODP's deputy communications director. After putting lipstick on that pig for a year, Hester is now paid at Progress Ohio from $5,000 monthly from The Strategy Network for marijuana "research".

Wilson, a long time political operative for the democrats in Ohio, worked on former Ohio SoS Jennifer Brunner's 2006 election & helped Brunner run the 2008 election in which Barack Obama won Ohio. Along with being a Brunner flunky, Wilson worked on the campaigns of Dick Cordray, Treasurer , John Kerry’s 2004 Ohio primary director and as the 1996 Ohio political director of the Clinton/​Gore campaign.

Responsible Ohio and Progress Ohio also share Don McTigue, who sits on Progress Ohio's board, and drafted Issue 3 from its birth.

So with all this Green Slime - we don't really even need to go into Responsible Ohio marketing to children with their "Buddie" character or lefty 1% er's using the Ohio Constitution to form a marijuana monopoly as a reason to Vote No on Issue 3!